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Beautiful Buildings and Black Mayonnaise: Addressing Sustainability in Gowanus

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Beautiful Buildings and Black Mayonnaise: Maintaining Community Sustainability in the Shade of a Superfund

Thomas Conboy
Dr. Jeniffer Telesca
Business and its Publics
April 2, 2014
Pinned on a wooden boat lying on the edge of the quiet canal, a business card reads:

Beside the dumpster a rat drinking rain from an eggshell.
(DJ Renegade, Washignton Poet, Seeing Black, 2001)

A first glance at the neighborhood of Gowanus would prove gritty, tarnished, and run down. Located on Southern Brooklyn at the mouth of a historical bay long utilized for merchant activity, Gowanus makes up the neighborhood directly surrounding the famed Gowanus Canal. One of America’s most polluted waterways, the 1.8 mile canal slices through the neighborhood; with industry, craft arts, and commercial development densely lining its banks. In 2010, The EPA placed the site on its Superfund National Priorities List, a major advancement towards a complete cleanup of the heavily polluted canal (Spitzer-Rubenstein, 2012). Currently, as the community of Gowanus eyes future development in the face of environmental gentrification, heightened concern regarding public health and community sustainability is visible a neighborhood whose key feature is an extremely polluted waterway. The Gowanus Canal was first developed for industry in the mid 19th century. The 100 foot wide, 12 foot foot deep canal to nowhere quickly became one of America’s shortest and most productive waterways. Heavy polluters like Manufactured Gas Plants, which gasify coal, soap manufacturers, and tanneries lined its banks, carelessly dumping industrial waste (Prete, 2010). Within a decade of it’s completion, it was fouled by illegal dumping and raw sewage, described as “VERY VILE… a nuisance seriously affecting the health of South Brooklyn people…” in an 1877 issue of the Brooklyn Eagle. When a groundbreaking flushing tunnel was installed in June 1911 linking Buttermilk Channel in New York Harbor to the head of the canal, residents responded by celebrating ‘South Brooklyn Day’, lining its bulkheads to watch the first Miss Gowanus throw red carnations into the canal from a shipping barge (Prete, 2010). The propeller driven flushing tunnel continued to operate until the early 1960’s, when a mechanical failure brought the waters of the Gowanus to a standstill once again, until repair efforts were finally proposed by the city 1982 and completed in 1999 (see picture 5)(Spitzer-Rubenstein, 2012). In the interim, the canal was locally coined ‘Lavender Lake’ for the purple sheen that could often be seen on oily surface deposits. While surface deposits and smell have declined since the tunnel’s repair, it is inadequate, and can only pump at low tide, requiring twice-daily shutdowns of the system (FROGG, 2009). Traveling beneath the surface, however, reveals more grotesque canal contents.
Known colloquially as ‘black mayonnaise’, the canal sediment exhibits extraordinary levels of toxins, many volatile to human life (see picture 1). Contaminants in the soft sediment, or sediment just below the surface layer, include cholera, hepatitis-A, strains of typhus, and other volatile pathogens. In addition, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons can be found in the sediments by as much as 45,000 milligrams per kilogram (4.5%) (EPA, 2012). PAH’s are proven carcinogens that have links to increased rates of cancer in exposed individuals, and standing on the edge of a contaminated site and breathing constitutes overexposure to human lungs (EPA, 2008). Samples of privately owned bulkheads that line the canal have tested positive for PAH’s, and will prove costly to individually remediate (see picture 4). In addition, the EPA cited concern over toxins from the canal contaminating fisheries in the Gowanus Bay, whose products are used for human consumption. (EPA, 2012)
In addition to lethal industrial sedimentary deposits, raw sewage discharges continue to enter the canal and infect it with pathogens. The head of the canal acts as a sewage release point during CSO’s, or combined sewage overflows. (Balkan, 2014, PlaNYC, 2007). In one YouTube video, sewage discharges into the canal after a rainstorm in a slow-moving wave of opaque brown water, trash, and feces, accompanied by an unsettling stench (Keanhokeanho, 2010). While the New York City Department of Environmental Protection began a facilities upgrade of the wastewater pumping station at 201 Douglass Street to reduce CSO’s in 2009, the project remains unfinished. In addition, the upgrade only reduces CSO output into the Gowanus by an estimated 34%; a partial fix to a major flaw in public health (Lawitts, 2009).
Given the extreme nature of the canal’s contamination, multiple community groups and NGO’s have developed specifically around canal initiatives in Gowanus. Friends and Residents of Greater Gowanus, or FROGG, are a preservationist organization initially formed under the Clean Water Act in 2002. They lobbied for superfund designation, and support preservation of Gowanus in its current state, including industry (FROGG, 2009). Bridging Gowanus, a community participatory convened by city councilmembers and facilitated by Pratt Institure, holds public symposiums as well as conducting individual stakeholder analysis. Their second public meeting in March 2014 saw over 150 attendees, with participation numbers rising; especially since Hurricane Sandy in 2012, when the Gowanus Canal crested, spilling raw sewage into the surrounding streets and alarming residents (see picture 10)(Bridging Gowanus, 2014). Tammy Pittman, Co-Creative Director at the Proteus Gowanus Museum, described it as an “Open information session for the average Gowanus resident to get a feel for what’s going on, and respond.” A third organization is the Gowanus Canal Community Develoment Corporation, founded by community activist Buddy Scotto, which promotes economic development within the neighborhood (Prete, 2010). Regardless of the canal’s toxicity, one fact holds true: the residents and friends of Gowanus are organically invested towards a healthy, yet profitable future.
While gentrification thrives in surrounding brownstone Brooklyn, Gowanus’s unique circumstances create a more complex scenario. Proximity to a superfund site creates a treacherous situation, where high wealth interests mingle with public health violations and existing polluting industry. In contrast to surrounding neighborhoods that are historically residential, Gowanus could produce an entirely different product of gentrification; specifically environmental gentrification. The term, popularized in a 2005 paper by Spencer Banzhaf and Eleanor McCormick, is gentrification that occurs after pollution is cleaned from a contaminated site, and high-wealth individuals desire to move in because of land value. Given a 28% increase in property values from December 2013 to March 2014 alone, Gowanus is beginning to embody this theory (Trulia, 2014). However, given no definitive time frame of the EPA cleanup, this theory could take years to materialize. As a result, Gowanus is finding itself at a crossroads in time, posed with the question of what best to do with the post-industrial landscape before them (See Santora, 2011).
Sociologists like Neil Smith and Saskia Sassen have studied urban gentrification through both social trends and market capital. According to Smith’s argument, as infrastructure decays in urban environments, real estate interests tend to decline. Eventually, as a neighborhoods infrastructure decays to the point where it becomes profitable to invest in the neighborhood, gentrification begins. When observing infrastructure pricing in Gowanus in comparison to rising real estate prices in surrounding communities, Gowanus appears to have crossed this threshold (Smith, 1996). Sassen’s theory centers around the global economy, arguing that concentrations of corporate activity and capital in urban metropolises like New York create demand for gentrified neighborhoods and businesses. These locales are in turn driven by local investment, as high wealth clientele seek neighborhoods to inhabit. However, an observation of developers before superfund declaration largely revokes this theory, as Toll Brothers, a development company whose primary focuses are the American Southwest and Mid-Atlantic, sought to build 447 luxury condos on the canal’s banks at Carroll Street. After superfund declaration dissuaded Toll Brother’s interest, New York real estate firm The Lightstone Group took over the property. In April 2013, the firm was approved by the Department of City Planning to construct a 700 unit rental tower on the site (see picture 3)(Pristin, 2013). Zoning changes proposed in 2010 would allow for much of the land on canal bank’s to be developed in a similar fashion, in conjunction with the Mayor Bloomberg’s initial plan of market driven remediation (Bridging Gowanus, 2014). While the Carroll Street development, along with other initiatives like Brooklyn’s first Whole Foods (see picture 9) represent new infrastructure in Gowanus, Superfund declaration has largely stymied the previous ‘race’ to develop the neighborhood. Danny Tinney, a real estate investor who owns several blocks along the canal, claims “…hundreds of investors [were] knocking at our door… Now, no one” (Santora, 2011). As a result, Superfund declaration has promoted remediation of not only the canal but the entire neighborhood; as investments unreflective of community sustainability no longer seem lucrative in the short-run.
While developers have turned their backs on immediate investment in Gowanus, a creative enclave has developed within the aging industrial infrastructure. Priced out of surrounding neighborhoods, artists and small businesses have flocked to Gowanus’s cheap industrial real estate, slowly creating a creative culture within the locale (see picture 6). In abandoned truck depot’s, nightclubs are opening. Restaurants and bars are buying and flipping warehouses and storefronts and thousands of shoppers travel to Gowanus each day to frequent the local Whole Foods (Santora, 2011). In turn, real estate values are increasing. In a 2002 study, Richard Florida argues that creative classes are essential to neighborhood success and development because they strive to “create meaningful new forms...” (Florida, 2002) (see picture 2). Industry, however, has made clear of their deep Gowanus roots. “The canal acts as an infrastructure that supports the city.” argues Mike Petroniso, a fifth generation family owner of Benson Metal, located on the canal (Gregory, 2013). Perhaps, the answer towards a robust Gowanus lies within the creativity of those who succumb to its raw, unadulterated beauty. Gowanus is alive, although increased community vitality is increasingly dangerous in the face of unwavering toxicity.
Furthermore, increases in population and attractiveness of Gowanus would be limited without transportation infrastructure, which is currently limited in the area. The IND Culver line, whose F and G trains service Gowanus, currently operates near capacity during peak AM and PM rush hours, and experienced a 4.5% increase in total passengers form 2012 to 2013 alone (MTA, 2014). Given the increase in commuters, two unused express tracks would likely be pulled into service. Unused platforms and stations would have to be rehabilitated, potentially costing the MTA millions (Brennan, 2001). Furthermore, the Culver viaduct that carries trains over the canal and to the Smith/9th Street Station does not have space to construct an additional platform (see picture 8)(Hermann, 2013) Ironically, this station would bear the bulk of a Gowanus’s transportation needs, given its central location. In contrast, bus routes such as the B77 linking Gowanus and Red Hook have been discontinued due to low ridership and MTA budget deficits (Farley, 2010). Transportation infrastructure would have to remain a priority in Gowanus planning, as environmental gentrification efforts would likely draw residents commuting to high-paying jobs in Manhattan.
Ultimately, the answer to Gowanus’s uncertain future lies in the voices of those who live and work within it. A sustainable, healthy Gowanus is one that provides an increased quality of life through healthy ecosystems and economic vitality. It requires responsible leadership, as well as active and informed community members. It requires prevention strategies enforced to maintain public well being, as well as investment of resources into the local economy (Kelsey, 2014). Currently, the developing influx of people, capital, and remaining industry spell trouble when centered around a toxic waterway with no remediation timeline.
Faced with a dangerous scenario, Gowanus resident see hope in the combined efforts of a participatory planning program. By merging stakeholders interests, environmental issues can be proliferated, while increasing discussion on community productivity. A nearby example of success in participatory planning is in lower Manhattan. Entitled Listening to the City, the conferences held at the Jacob Javitz Center in July 2002 brought together all stakeholders under one roof, allowing for a “more accessible, more equitable, and more successful… “ downtown rehabilitation program, the effects of which are being witnessed now with the completion of multiple initiatives. (Taylor, 2002). While Bridging Gowanus, the largest group of citizen representatives in Gowanus today, has taken definitive strides towards responding to community feedback, the organization has the potential to shift from a community informer to a community receptor, acting as an important connection between policymakers, developers, and community members.
Currently, the future of Gowanus remains unstable. The community has enormous potential to transform itself through planning, although addressing challenges in pollution, economic development, and environmental gentrification will be requisite. If successfully remediated, Gowanus could serve as a twenty-first century model of environmental gentrification in urban America (see picture 7).

Word Count: 1993

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